Obligatory Halloween stuff

In case you missed it, yesterday was Halloween. We aren’t big Halloween celebrators, but we like to carve pumpkins and wear costumes (if you are a big Halloween celebrator, then you’ll love the display my friend Elle put up in her yard, and even if you’re not, you should check it out anyways ’cause it rocks). The kids started asking for pumpkins on the 1st of October and apparently, Mr. Gren and I just got into refusal mode (thinking we’d do it closer to time), until the 30th when once again Rana asked, “Aren’t we going to do pumpkins this year?” Word to the wise: don’t go shopping for jack-o-lantern pumpkins the day before Halloween. If you find any, they’ll all have the stems knocked off, gouges in the sides from being on the bottom of the heap for a month, and/or in various stages of rot. We ended up having to buy pie pumpkins. I told Rana I could cook them after they were done being jack-o-lanterns, but she was horrified at the thought and made me promise that I wouldn’t do such a heinous thing.

We usually have the kids draw a face on a piece of paper which Mr. Gren and I then copy onto the pumpkin in Sharpie. They each drew a face and then decided that their pumpkin faces looked too similar to last years’. Somewhere in the discussion, we branched way out from regular jack-o-lantern faces with triangle eyes and toothy grins to Hello Kitty, Curious George, and Princess Peach. Looking at pictures of the three characters, I freehand drew them onto the pumpkins and then Mr. Gren and I commenced carving. I don’t trust any of my kids with table knives much less anything with a point!

Ah, but don’t think that the kids got out of all the work. They had to empty the pumpkins first. I’d much rather do the carving!

As for costumes, I didn’t sew or create anything as in years past. Granota wanted to be a princess and we found a lovely princess dress for her at the thrift store. The crown I did make… several years ago. It used to have jewels, but restless fingers picked them all off sometime last year.

Konik is not too thrilled with this whole costume concept. So we tricked him. He loves his rainboots and raincoat and he always likes to have a hat on when he goes out…

Rana originally wanted to be Cleopatra. At the thrift store, we weren’t finding any plain white garments that could easily be adapted into an Egyptian style dress. But then the sleeve of a gold and black floral printed blouse caught Rana’s eye. “This looks like a rock star!” she exclaimed. In reality it looked like an old lady dressing up for a dinner party. But it was the catalyst. The lightbulb came on and Rana declared, “I want to be a rock star! I wanna be Joan Jett!” Shopping for actual clothing is so much easier. We wheeled down to the kids’ section and look what we found:

They got to show off their costumes at a local church’s Trunk or Treat, came home and collapsed into bed. Perfect!